1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus and a maintenance method of, for example, a printer and the like.
2. Related Art
In the related art, as an example of a liquid ejecting apparatus, there is an ink jet type printer including a recording head ejecting ink droplets from a nozzle opening and a capping unit performing a cleaning operation that sucks and discharges ink from the nozzle opening. In such a printer, a technique is known for discharging air bubbles with liquid from the nozzle opening by sucking the air bubbles, after expanding the air bubbles present in an ink flow path inside the recording head by maintaining for a predetermined time a state where a negative pressure is accumulated in an internal space of the capping unit that seals the nozzle opening (for example, JP-A-2001-1554).
However, in the above technique, in the recording head, it is possible to efficiently discharge the air bubbles in a downstream portion of the ink flow path close to the nozzle opening, but the cleaning operation may be completed while the air bubbles in an upstream portion of the ink flow path have not reached the nozzle opening. Then, there is a problem that the air bubbles expanded by maintaining a state where the negative pressure is accumulated remain in the ink flow path and discharge failure of the ink occurs despite completion of the cleaning operation.